Contents

As it had been in the years before the Great War, Big MT... the Big Empty... became home to one of the brightest minds of the 23rd century. The Courier watched over the Big Empty for years to come, caring for it, and keeping its discoveries safe until they were needed to help others. Which had always been Big MT's purpose. Past the laboratories and Science, it had always been intended as a place to build the future of all mankind.

As it had been in the years before the Great War, Big MT... the Big Empty... became home to one of the most powerful minds of the 23rd century. The Courier who had been brought to the Big Empty became its new overlord, using its facilities ruthlessly and decisively when needed. Sometimes Science is more than a quest for discovery - it is a weapon to be used in the service of one with the strength to understand it.

The Sink Central Intelligence Unit was impressed by the amount of exploration the Courier had undertaken. Facilities believed lost, destroyed, or ones that had simply gotten up and walked to new locations had been re-discovered by its intrepid new master. Internally, the artificial personality debated as to whether it preferred the old management to the new... and concluded that the Courier's thorough approach to research and investigation was admirable and worthy of its respect.

The Courier had scoured much of the Big Empty, although secrets still remained in the crater's depths. Perhaps that was for the best, however... curiosity, while sometimes rewarded for its efforts, often proves to be equally dangerous.

Although, truth be told, the Courier had barely explored the Crater in an attempt to rush through and be done with the whole thing... Perhaps that was for the best, however... curiosity, while sometimes rewarded for its efforts, often proves to be equally dangerous.

Dr. Mobius continued his research undisturbed in the Forbidden Zone. As much as he had attempted to create better scorpions, he tried the same with humanity, with considerably less success. These failures didn't bother him overmuch. Once the rush of Mentats wore off, he forgot he had failed in any event. After all, the bright young mind who had come to visit him in the Forbidden Zone had already exceeded his expectations.

The Forbidden Zone continued to be, true to its name, forbidden. No more Robo-Scorpions were sighted in its canyons. Big MT became even emptier, devoid of Dr. Mobius' proclamations forecasting the destruction of anything that dared possess sentience. Still, it is said he lived on in the equations inscribed on the floor and walls of the Forbidden Zone dome...

The Sink atop the Dome gained a frontier town feel with the few modules installed. They shouted at each other across the HQ occasionally, either threatening each other, or announcing a discovery. It kept things... lively. Secretly, the Sink Central Intelligence Unit was relieved that not all of the personality chips had been found. What was there, was enough.

The Sink atop the Dome bustled with the voices of a small town, constantly chirping, arguing, and snarling at each other. Still, this all happened productively in the interests of its new owner. The Sink Central Intelligence Unit discovered, despite its inversion code, it was comforted by the sense of community the other personalities gave it.

The Biological Research Station, obsessed with seeding everything in sight, requested a transfer to the X-22 Botanical Garden... so that it might, in its own words, "sensually fertilize the garden's smooooth contours." The Garden sent back a polite refusal, saying it had prior commitments with a Vault it had helped infect before the war.

These ending slides appear if the Book Chute was installed and are narrated by the Book Chute

#

Slide

Voice-over narration

In-game condition

1

The Book Chute continued to devour all seditious materials until it nearly choked on a paper clip. It adamantly maintained it was a Chinese paper clip, and the whole thing had been an elaborately orchestrated assassination attempt. Whatever the reason, it slowed down for a while, carefully appraising each document and clipboard that came to it.

− Sink Central Intelligence Unit: The light switches continued to bicker and flicker.
− Light Switch 02: This persisted until the day someone dropped a flashlight in the Sink, and the two of them united in their hatred of the "showboat."

These ending slides appear if Toaster was installed and are narrated by the Toaster.

#

Slide

Voice-over narration

In-game condition

1a

The Toaster continued its psychotic spree, reducing all appliances in range to scrap electronics and spare parts. After one of its more psychotic episodes, however, the other Sink personalities decided enough was enough, and dumped the Toaster in a bathtub. Sparking and hissing, the Toaster swore its enemies would rue the day when they had bread - and no way to toast it.

The Toaster continued its psychotic spree, reducing all appliances in range to scrap electronics and spare parts. It learned several new murderous techniques from the Courier, and built a Blood Shrine to itself in the Cuckoo's Nest. The cave floor was soon filled with the horror of a hundred gutted toasters, a silent, grisly, unplugged audience... their purpose... to toast bread... unfulfilled.

Muggy did his best to collect coffee cups, although in his quest, he accidentally trapped himself in Higgs Village. It might have been the end for poor Muggy. Except... he found it peaceful there, tidying up the kitchens of the Think Tank Professors back when they had been flesh and bone. Well, except for Dr. O, who was an asshole for having created Muggy in the first place. Muggy left O's house deliberately dirty, punishing the dishes and cups that lived there in blind revenge for serving Dr. O.

These ending slides appear if Sink Auto-Doc was installed and are narrated by Sink Auto-Doc.

#

Slide

Voice-over narration

In-game condition

1

Auto-Doc, always gentle and methodical, kept sewing up the Courier in all the right places when the skin split open from repeated wear and tear. The Auto-Doc was just glad to have purpose again. It heard its simpler brothers and sisters who got shipped to the Sierra Madre were bored out of their skulls in that toxic, dead city.

As the Courier made his way through the X-8 facility, the computers analyzed the test subject's movements. They eventually created new cyberdogs to root out Commie traitors from the Wasteland... traitors like Betsy Bright... Richie Marcus... although they couldn't seem to find any Commies, so they turned on themselves, howling sonic barks that echoed miles across the landscape.

As the Courier ran through the X-8 facility multiple times, the computers analyzed the test subject's movements. Rather than performing a superficial observation, they realized the subject barely knew what Communism was - or even what a high school was. This confused them for a time, until the facility finally realized that its research had... succeeded. So it let its cyberdogs out into the wastes to help protect small communities from physical aggression rather than communist propaganda.

The infiltration program in X-13 continued to scan for the subject and the Stealth Suit prototype long after the test was over. Frustrated and unable to find its lost technology, X-13 expanded its network of laser tripwires, sensors, and robobrains out across Big MT. This glittering blue light beam forest cleanly bisected anything that entered its depths, slicing them into small, segmented parts for easy disposal.

The infiltration program in X-13 felt spent, having repeatedly upgraded the Stealth Suit until it could upgrade it no more. It felt warm, fulfilled, and a bit sluggish. It realized not long after, the Stealth Suit had left it without so much as a note on the nightstand. So the infiltration program sent out robobrains into the wastes looking for its wayward technology. It eventually found REPCONN HQ, and set up a new research center, testing and murdering Fiends who kept breaking into the facility.

There, she ran across Rex at the Kings School of Impersonation. His brain was failing. That was all right, he was still smarter than the Think Tank. The two of them constructed a litter of cyberpups, a small army of Boston terrifiers that gnawed and devoured anything in their path.

There, she ran across Rex, who had been following the Courier, just as she had. They barked for a while, and realized they had a lot in common. The two of them constructed a litter of cyberpups, a small army of Boston terrifiers that gnawed and devoured anything in their path.

There, she ran across the corpse of Rex. She dragged him back to the Big Empty and had him rebuilt for company. The two of them constructed a litter of cyberpups, a small army of Boston terrifiers that gnawed and devoured anything in their path.

The Courier, organs intact, continued onwards, a little less heavy of step, but with all the organs in the right places. As they should be. After all, brains can develop a life of their own when left to their own thoughts, and the Courier's brain was more clever than most.

The Courier left the brain at the Big Empty. A strange thing to say, but it was the truth. Brains are less important than they may seem. When the Courier's body finally passed, the brain was saddened. It kept on, remembering the vessel that had once contained it.

And so it burbled and bubbled inside its tank, smug that it still could dream its future without glands getting in the way. In time, however, it became so self-obsessed it wondered if perhaps nothing existed except itself. It decided to test this by turning the weapons of the Big Empty against each other and seeing what happened. The answer is lost to history, as is much of the Mojave.

Even at the end when it started to fail, however, the brain resisted going into a floating chassis like the Think Tank. It never said why. Perhaps it was out of respect for the Courier's body. All things must come to an end, and to hang on to the past is something that's not to be undertaken lightly.

Dr. Klein and the Think Tank remained alive, unaware of the world outside. They looped through their daily routine, none the wiser about the world beyond... although perhaps "wiser" was the wrong word. The world outside belonged to the Courier, and if anyone would shape it... well, the Courier had already called dibs.

The Think Tank basement, filled with the lobotomized robotical frames of the doctors, now served as a graveyard. The monitors had recorded the battle in its entirety, including the Think Tank's final shrill terrified screams, whimpers, and pleas for mercy. They broadcast these humiliating last moments as a warning to anyone approaching the perimeter that other smarty-pants were not welcome. The Courier was the inheritor of the Big Empty, and there was room for only one will in the halls of the Think Tank Dome.

− Doctor Mobius: There is an expression in the Wasteland: "Old World Blues."− Doctor Klein: It refers to those so obsessed with the past they can't see the present, much less the future, for what it is.− Doctor Dala: They stare into the what-was, eyes like pilot lights, guttering and spent, as the realities of their world continue on around them.− Doctor O: Science is a long, steady progression into the future. What may seem a sudden event often isn't felt for years, even centuries, to come.

− Doctor Mobius: In the times following the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, however, Old World Blues took on a new meaning.− Doctor Klein: Where once it was viewed as a form of sadness, nostalgia, it became an expression describing the potential for the future.− Doctor Dala: It can be easy to see Science as evil, technology unchecked as the source of all ills, all misfortunes.− The Courier's Brain: With the Courier at the helm, Science became a beacon for the future. There was Old World Blues, and New World Hope. And hope ruled the day at Big MT.

− Doctor Mobius: The Big Empty lived up to its name, a hollow crater of failures of a past era, a last, sad statement of the Old World.− Doctor Klein: In the time following the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, "Old World Blues" became more than a catch phrase.− Doctor O: It became a reality, a withering form of nostalgia for times long past.− Doctor Dala: It can be easy to see Science as evil, technology unchecked as the source of all ills, all misfortunes.− The Courier's Brain: With the Courier at the helm, it was all this and more. Old World Blues, New World Misery - the two became one in the Courier's shadow.

− Sink Central Intelligence Unit: We could say more, but the stories in the Big Empty speak for themselves. Now armed with the Transportalponder, the Courier could return to the Dome at any time and crack open the secrets of the Big Empty, one by one. The Sink sat vigilant, waiting for its master to return, shoes covered in Mojave dust. Only one road yet remained, and it was one the Courier had to walk alone.

The information below was cut from the final verson of the add-on, but the slide images could still be found in the game file, and the text for the intended narration was later released by Chris Avellone[1]:

#

Slide

Voice-over narration

In-game condition

In the decades following the Battle of Hoover Dam, the Big Empty remained a desolate stretch of wasteland, where few travelers dared venture.

{Curious, this is odd...}In time, however, a strange blue field began to grow, slowly spreading across the Big Empty.

Lightning-blue fields of force danced on the horizon, like electrical storms.

People whispered of "floating spheres," flickering like a rainbow of torches in the desert like Old World wisps.

{Cold, curiosity changes to doom}Then communities began to vanish.

Goodsprings was crushed beneath bizarre hexcrete blocks that stacked to the sky. The inhabitants of Primm winked out, flesh-fried into X-ray silhouettes, their arms raised in surrender.

A satellite fell on Jacobstown, beaming a kaleidoscope of bright blue equations into the deranged Nightkin minds, driving some berserk, paralyzing others.

Black Mountain Radio began broadcasting a strange staccato static as hordes of giant man-eating battle Brahmin began to swarm from its peak.

Camp Searchlight became a garden of giant carnivorous plants, and the Colorado river... "shrugged" one day, drowning several communities as its contours adjusted themselves.

The Gomorrah became home to a particularly virulent vegetation-based STD that grew like a fungus within victim's genitalia until their bodies burst open like pods.

The Legion East were systematically brain-scrubbed and rebuilt so that all the inhabitants believed they were in ancient Rome... on the moon.

...and the human cattle of NCR were re-educated into believing they existed in perpetuity in a nation-wide version of someplace called "Tranquility Lane."

In the end, no one was sure who had cracked the Dome of the Big Empty, although it was clear someone had been playing with forces they did not understand.

Throughout all this, the Think Tank was industrious, confident these experiments were all for the best, the results of the data they obtained - incredible.

They marveled that {emph}all of this had been waiting for them to come along and experiment since the war.

{Knowingly}Humanity certainly was persistent, no matter what experiments, nuclear holocaust or otherwise, it inflicted on itself.